theedge.bostonherald.com/tvNews/view.bg?articleid=131412‘South Park’ creators plan to cook Chef’s goose
By Sean L. McCarthy
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
“South Park” is responding to Chef’s departure the only way the show knows how - by mocking it.
The 10th season of Comedy Central’s highest-rated series premieres tomorrow night with, of all things, “The Return of Chef.”
Despite the fact that Isaac Hayes quit the show last week, his character takes center stage exhibiting “strange behavior” that prompts Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny to save Chef from causing more damage to South Park.
Who replaces Hayes’ voice? And what happens to the veteran character?
“Tune in Wednesday,” said Comedy Central spokesman Steve Albani. “We’re purposely keeping this a little mysterious.”
Of course, it helps that the episode itself isn’t even finished yet.
Since 1997, “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have created quick and sharp satires of politics, pop culture and current events - often producing new half-hour shows within days.
Hayes, who voiced Chef for the show’s first nine seasons, quit over the 2005 episode, “Trapped in the Closet,” which skewered his Scientology beliefs and repeatedly joked that Scientologist “Tom Cruise still will not come out of the closet.” That episode was supposed to rerun last week but didn’t.
Some guessed Cruise himself stopped the show. His “Mission Impossible: III” releases this summer via Paramount. Viacom owns Paramount and Comedy Central.
Stone and Parker issued a press release last weekend saying Scientology “may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!”
The battle resumes at 10 p.m. tomorrow on Comedy Central.